


can't help but love so many

by louciferish



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alpha Parker, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Beta Alec Hardison, Blood and Injury, Established Relationship, Implied Mpreg, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Not Beta Read, Omega Eliot Spencer, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28756506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish
Summary: “Eliot.” The other man blinks, eyelids molasses slow and not more than half-lidded, the bob of his scruff-dotted throat still exposed to the air, and Hardison has to drag his eyes away from it, focusing hard on the shapes and patterns in their wood floor. “You got suppressants to take?”Everything stops. Parker drops from her beam, landing in a crouch on the floor, but even that doesn’t make a sound.Eliot exhales sharply, “Shit.”
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 13
Kudos: 116





	can't help but love so many

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably closer to T than M, but I upgraded it just in case. Sexual content level is mild, but there's also a fair amount of wound description in one scene.
> 
> I've never written omegaverse before, mostly because I have a lot of different pet peeves with the common tropes in the genre, one of which is "why do betas even exist?" That got me thinking for a while about writing omegaverse where the "ideal" relationship configuration wasn't alpha/omega, but a triad with all three components being equal. 
> 
> I've also never written for Leverage, but it's one of the fandoms I came back to for comfort content in 2020. What better place to use a fic idea that requires an OT3, right?

Their apartment smells like apple pie, rich and buttery with more than a hint of cinnamon, cloves, and maybe even good cheddar cheese melted in. There’s a hint of something strong and sharp in it, like whiskey, or maybe a nice Kentucky bourbon, and it’s that in particular that pulls Hardison out of the bedroom a good hour earlier than normal, because sometimes Parker helps with the shopping and brings home some weird-ass flavored coffees, for sure, but bourbon and pie is a wild choice, even for Parker.

When Hardison reaches the living room, still stretching, rubbing the crust from his eyes into the pinprick stubble on his chin, he finds Eliot stretched out on the couch with a book open flat on his chest, head back against the armrest, his throat exposed to the ceiling as his hair falls in soft waves away from his face. Parker, across the room, is upside down. She’s sweating, working herself into a lather on a ceiling beam, practicing some sort of move that’s between a pull-up and a pole climb. 

Parker growls, missing one of her grabs, and Eliot shifts on the sofa. That rich, spicy, apple pie smell slams into Hardison’s gut so hard, Eliot may as well have punched him personally. 

Oh. Shit. 

“Eliot.” The other man blinks, eyelids molasses slow and not more than half-lidded, the bob of his scruff-dotted throat still exposed to the air, and Hardison has to drag his eyes away from it, focusing hard on the shapes and patterns in their wood floor. “You got suppressants to take?”

Everything stops. Parker drops from her beam, landing in a crouch on the floor, but even that doesn’t make a sound. 

Eliot exhales sharply, “Shit.”

At the same time, Parker goes, “Oh.”

And yeah, that’s what Hardison thought, too. Just not in that order. 

“I’m gonna just…” Eliot rolls off the couch, and Hardison nods and lets him go, doesn’t follow even though he wants to, and watches _Parker_ watching Eliot, her eyes lit up like he’s a whole hoard of treasure, and he knows exactly how she feels -- surprised, intrigued, _tempted_.

-

They’ve been doing this thing, whatever “this thing” is, for a while now -- three months or so, if Hardison were to estimate it, but closer to a year if he asks Parker. Eliot, he’s not so sure about. Somewhere between a month and five years, if he’s guessing.

In all that time, they’d never mentioned how their dynamics would factor into the equation. It didn’t matter, not in their line of work. Hardison didn’t _need_ to be a beta to be a hacker, just like Sophie didn’t need to be an omega to grift. She’d used it to her advantage plenty, sure, but he’d seen her just as easily play alpha or beta if the situation called for it, and that kind of adaptability was a big part of why she fit so well with Nate.

Hardison had the same biology classes everyone else did as a kid. (Well, everyone but Parker, and maybe that was going to be a problem he needed to remember.) He knew that about seventy percent of alphas identified as male, give or take. He knew the same was true when it came to omegas and mostly being women. Betas like him were split right near down the middle, which suited him just fine. 

So he’d never given much consideration to what his partners might be. It didn’t matter. From a statistical standpoint, Eliot was most likely an alpha or a beta, and Parker was most likely an omega or beta, and if all three of them were betas then that wasn’t ideal by most people’s standards, but hell -- what about the three of them was? What mattered in a relationship, in terms of dynamics, was balance. And they balanced the fuck out of each other.

-

Now that it’s in the air, Hardison figures, they’ll need to talk about it eventually. It hasn’t mattered, but it will, but also he’s a beta. He doesn’t need to worry about taking suppressants, and he doesn’t need to worry about heats or ruts aside from helping his partners through them, so he figures it’s not his place to open his stupid mouth, even if he wants to, even if he has a million questions. It’s Eliot’s choice. If he needs time to say something, he deserves to have all of it.

Parker kills that plan two days later.

She’s sitting at the bar with Hardison, an empty stool between them waiting for Eliot to finish garnishing the damn dinner plates as if either of them cares what color sauce is on the salmon. Her feet go _thunk thunk thunk_ against the side of the bar, a conscious signal that she’s waiting for their attention.

Hardison looks over at her bright face, her blonde hair hanging loose and relaxed over her shoulders, and Eliot looks up from the third plate he’s just laid a flower-shaped slice of radish on, and Parker tilts her head, opens her mouth, and says, “Why are you still taking suppressants?”

“Parker--” Alec’s mouth opens and closes. He’s not sure how to finish what he started, and he can’t look away from Eliot and the way he’s gone stiff all over, as if readying himself for a fight.

“What? We’re a Thing, aren’t we?” She gestures, the vague sketch of a triangle between them, though in their line of work it’s more like a pyramid scheme. “Isn’t that what people do when they’re living together, go off their suppressants?” 

“Sure,” Alec says slowly, because Eliot still isn’t answering. “ _Some_ people do that, but that doesn’t mean we--”

“I didn’t think about it.” Eliot’s quiet, quieter than Alec’s ever heard him outside of a stealth mission or a day he’s been punched in the throat. “Last week, I just… forgot.” His eyes are on the freshly garnished plates in front of him, but there are layers of confusion in his voice, as if he doesn’t quite understand it himself. “All those years in the military, and before, and after, and I’ve never forgotten them.”

And yeah, Alec understands why he’s saying it this way now, what that means. He slides his hand along the counter, reaching for Eliot, and meets Parker’s slim fingers along the way. Their hands pile together on the granite.

It’s quiet for a moment as they all breathe, settling back into their space. Alec’s waiting for Parker to be Parker, to leap right into the next question, but she only laces her fingers with theirs more, and that means it’s up to him this time.

“Do y’all _want_ to go off your suppressants?”

Eliot looks up, blue eyes sharp, and Parker tilts her head and purses her lips, and Alec wants to laugh or maybe shake them both. It was the _obvious_ question, but they both act like he’d sold them on a bank job and then dropped them off in front of an art museum instead. 

“I don’t know,” Eliot says, slow and deliberate, a crease between his eyebrows joined by friends as he turns the words over on his tongue. “I’ve never actually… I got pheromone tested at thirteen. My family wasn’t real happy with the outcome.”

Alec nods and tries to smooth his features. It’s best, when his partners talk about their old families, if he doesn’t look surprised. This bit of info shouldn’t be surprising. Omega boys aren’t rare, really, but they’re unusual enough that Alec knows in some cultures they get… looks. Sideways kind of looks. Still, to put a thirteen year old on suppressants right away and never have him go off, not even once? Alec’s not a doctor. He’s not even very good at Surgeon Simulator. But he’s pretty sure that’s not exactly encouraged by the medical establishment.

“I’ve never had a rut, either,” Parker says suddenly, and all Alec can think at that point is _fuck_.

He’s an adult man with two grown-ass partners, and neither of them, apparently, knows shit about their secondary genders. He did _not_ pay enough attention in biology class for this. 

“I didn’t always take my suppressants, though,” Parker adds, and Alec and Eliot both turn sharply to look at her. She shrugs her small shoulders. “If I’m not on a job, it doesn’t matter much. I never really worked with other people, and I never worked with any omegas, aside from Sophie.” 

Her lips quirk when she mentions Sophie, and Alec bites back a groan. Sophie might have a whole hell of a lot to do with how they ended up in this situation, actually. She was religious about her own suppressants, but in a very controlled way. Alec had seen her go bag, her collection of creams and perfumes that she’d rub into her skin at the scent points, making herself smell warm, ripe. On a classic job, Sophie would perpetually smell like she was hours, _seconds_ away from a full heat. It was powerful stuff. It worked like magic if she needed to distract an alpha or pry a little information out of a particularly receptive beta.

It had also fucking desensitized the whole team, to the point where there were days Alec felt like he’d just spent ten hours in a Bath and Body Works, his nose unable to process anything but the ghost of _Sophie_ seared into his tissues. 

No wonder none of them had noticed anything until after Sophie and Nate skipped town.

Alec’s still struggling to remember anything from junior high biology classes beyond their teacher, Mrs. Gulliver, bending over her desk to point out a diagram on the board and the immediate, horrifying boner Alec’s body supplied in response. Mrs. Gulliver was like, _sixty_.

“I’ll do it,” Eliot declares abruptly. He doesn’t look reluctant about it, either. His arms are folded, jaw jutting out with that stubborn tightness to his mouth that says, _I dare you to fight this._

Alec knows better than to start shit with that look. Even asking, _You sure?_ can be too much. But that doesn’t stop him from folding his own arms, raising his eyebrows, asking all the questions at once without speaking a word.

Eliot inclines his head toward Parker, who hasn’t twitched since the conversation switched lanes to Sophie. “Parker’s right,” he says. “We’re a… a Thing. This is what people do, in Things.”

“We’re not people. I mean, we’re not usually that _kind_ of people, the kind who…” He’s not sure how he actually wants to finish that. Not the kind of people who make commitments, but they already said _until my dying day_. Not the kind of people who make a home together, but they already have this apartment, the brewpub, a _family_. So, he doesn’t say any of that. 

Instead, he lets his mouth move without words a few times, and then he says, “You sure?” even though he wasn’t going to.

“Yeah.” The hard line of Eliot’s jaw softens, and he smiles like honey dripping onto waffles. “I’m sure.” He stiffens and squirms at first when the other two move in for a hug, bats at their hands and tries to pretend he’s put out about it, but Alec knows the truth. As always, resistance is futile.

-

Eliot is limping.

Eliot is bleeding, bruised, and _limping_ , and if Alec had enough hair to get a grip on, he’d be pulling it out at the roots because this was supposed to be a _no fights_ sort of job. The client, Deanna, was a lovely older woman who’d come to them on the edge of tears because her family home was being repossessed, thanks to a predatory second mortgage put onto the property in her mother’s name. Her mother had been ninety-four when she died, and most days she’d thought she was about fourteen. Deanna, her only living child, was also her full-time caregiver until the day she passed. Now, she was being put out on the street by a bank she’d never even walked into before.

It was the kind of case that none of them would call “easy,” but only because they didn’t want to jinx it. Most of the work would be Alec, running through the back alleys of secured systems, rerouting pathways and mixing up money represented by zeroes and ones. The small amount of in-person thievery required was Parker’s department, and so Eliot had only been there as back-up, a pretty distraction to talk to the right people at just the right moment for Parker to rappel past a window, disable a pinpad, and slip into a back door. 

There weren’t supposed to be security guards. There sure as _hell_ wasn’t supposed to be one with a _god damned machete_.

But Eliot did his job, because he’s Eliot, and Parker managed to get her part done before rushing to help him, because she’s Parker, and now that they’re all back in the apartment - Eliot, limping, with his arm around Parker’s shoulders for support as if she’s not half his weight - Alec is doing a really _bad_ job of pretending not to be freaked out, because he’s Alec.

Eliot slumps onto the couch, and Alec bites his tongue on Sofie’s voice in his head yelling, _Blood on the upholstery!_ because this is exactly why they bought a stain-resistant sofa. 

“I’ll get the stuff,” Alec says, but when he turns toward the nearest stashed first-aid kit, Parker is already there, rummaging under the kitchen cabinets for bandages and antiseptic, running water into a bowl so they can clean the cuts.

“Those better not be my good bowls you’re using,” Eliot grouses. His head is back on the sofa, eyes closed and the long column of his throat bared. Alec finds himself eying that skin in a way he never expected to. There’s been no talk about marks, even after the suppressants talk. Maybe there should be a talk about marks.

“I got the steel one.” Parker straddles Eliot’s lap, perching herself on his knees with the bowl in one arm and the kit in the other. “Easier to clean, right?” She squirms around long enough to hand the bowl off to Alec, then sets to work on unbuttoning what’s left of Eliot’s plaid shirt.

“You get all the good jobs,” Alec faux-complains, watching her small fingers gently peel back the tattered material where it sticks to Eliot’s skin. There’s more blood than wound, he reminds himself, teeth pressed to the tip of his tongue. It’s never as bad as it looks -- except when it’s worse.

“Perks of being the one assigning the jobs.” Parker flips her hair back over her shoulder before giving Alec a coy look. “Besides, you get the touching job. Touching job’s good too.”

“Could ya’ll wait to flirt with each other till _after_ I’ve stopped bleeding?” 

Parker rolls her eyes and tugs away the last few patches of ruined shirt faster than the others, making Eliot sit up and hiss. “You know better than to complain to the boss while she’s got a hand on your guts,” Alec reminds Eliot. No sympathy for fools. “Besides, you’re part of any flirting that’s happening here. You’re, in fact, sort of the subject of the flirting.”

“Or at least the object.” Rather than dismount Eliot’s hips the easy way, Parker pops onto her feet, the hops over the back of the sofa. Smooth as nutella, Alec slips in with the bowl and washcloth to take her place.

 _Not as bad as it looks_ , he reminds himself again. It’s harder to remember when he’s up close and personal, the smell of blood and sharp sweat overwhelming any hints of Eliot’s personal scent. There are only two gashes that Alec can see -- small but deep, steadily bleeding in the meaty part of Eliot’s right bicep, and a long, wicked one across his stomach. Alec’s _hoping_ that one’s not deep -- he doesn’t feel like looking at any organs today -- but it’s hard to tell. It certainly bled a lot. There’s wet smears and dried blood all over Eliot’s torso.

“You gonna tell me most of this is from the other guy?” Alec asks as he wrings out the wet cloth.

“Enough of it.” When the rag touches his skin, Eliot closes his eyes and lets his head fall back, and Alec has to remind himself to keep breathing normally, not to get a stiffy when one of his partners is actively bleeding, but bodies are weird like that. 

He knows, logically, that Eliot’s eyes are shut because he’s hiding. It’s easier, with those baby blues closed, to conceal the pain when Alec’s cleaning gets a bit rough or the water and antiseptic starts to sting. Eliot’s first concern, always, is keeping his partners from worrying about the damage done to his body. 

That doesn’t change the fact that this particular pose -- head back, eyes closed, throat exposed to the world -- is a vulnerable one, _especially_ charged by Eliot’s omega status. Alec’s eyes fixate on that throat again, the prickles of hair darkening Eliot’s jawline. He’s not thinking about marks anymore; he’s thinking about _apple pie and whiskey_. The smell of blood and chemical antiseptic is overwhelming the room, and Alec bites the tip of his tongue again to hold in a whine, keeps his back straight and hips still, and resists the urge begging him to bury his face in Eliot’s skin, that delicate place behind his ear, and inhale. It’s _comfort_ , not possession.

Alec wrings out the rag, soaks it again, pretends not to notice Eliot’s flinch when the cold water drips onto his stomach. 

“Do you want babies?”

Now it’s Alec’s turn to close his eyes. He _has_ to, or he’s either going to laugh or throw this whole damn bowl of water over Parker’s head. Trust Parker to think _now_ is the time for more of her damn questions. 

He takes a second to get the worst of his tongue under a leash, then asks, “Parker, why would _now_ be the time you ask him that?” In truth, he’d expected it eventually. He had a whole lecture and powerpoint ready to go on his computer, when needed, _Omegas: More Than Reproduction_. 

But Parker shakes her head. “Not asking him. We already talked. I’m asking you now.”

“Me?” Alec glances over at Eliot, but his eyes are more tightly shut than before. Avoidance. “You two talked about babies? Without me?”

“Of course,” Parker scoffs. “We’re the ones who can _have_ them.”

 _Huh._ It makes sense. Alec just hadn’t expected his partners to reach that conclusion without him. “Well, what’d you decide, then?”

Parker’s _well duh_ face is legendary. “We decided to ask you.”

“... Fair enough.” This shit is important; he knows that, so Alec gives a minute for his thoughts to settle into the right order, silently busying himself with the equally important task of cleaning Eliot’s wounds. They’re already looking a little more tolerable with the worst of the dried blood cleaned away from the edges. 

Alec dabs the cloth over the longer cut on Eliot’s stomach and lets out a relieved breath when he sees only muscle and skin, nothing vital peeking out. As he swipes away the rest of the blood around it, he starts to talk, picking his words carefully at first. “Growing up, it took me a while to realize my Nana loved me, but I knew she did. I think I knew it even before I accepted it, you know? Lord knows I didn’t make it easy on her some days. Still don’t. I was the kind of kid who made loving me _work_ , but Nana was the first person that wasn’t scared off by that.

“That woman gave me a lot -- more patience and acceptance than my scrawny ass deserved at times. And I’m grateful as hell for that. I guess… I guess I like the idea of putting some of that love she gave me back out into the world, and we do that at work, but doing that for a kid, or a couple kids, that would be good too.”

As Alec soaks the rag and wrings it out again, he smiles down at the pink-tinged water in the bowl. “Gotta admit, I’m not sure we lead a kid kind of lifestyle, but a little Alec running around here is a fun image.” His smile widens as he adds, “Or a little Eliot, or an even littler Parker dangling from the damn rafters like a baby spider.” 

He moves from the now-clean stomach wound up to the more serious chunk missing from Eliot’s arm and takes the opportunity to raise his head and check in on the other two. Eliot’s eyes are fixated on the ceiling, studiously not looking at him. He glances over at Parker and finds her arms folded, lip tucked beneath her teeth.

“Okay, spill. What’d you two talk about, because it looks like I’m missing two thirds of this conversation here.”

“I don’t like babies,” Parker says. Her body language is tight, shoulders stiff, and if Alec weren’t busy with Eliot he’d at least try a hand out to pull her out of that, but he can’t with Eliot’s bicep still bleeding. 

She continues, “Kids are okay, but babies…” Her nose wrinkles. “They’re loud and fragile, and they smell funny. Like an antique but with no redeeming monetary value. And, pregnancy--” Parker visibly shudders when she says the word, arms tightening around her torso. She looks like she just took a big bite of salted cod with capers at a fancy party and is trying hard to remember what Sophie taught her about not spitting out food where others can see.

Alec folds the wash cloth over Eliot’s arm, giving it a second to soak, and then holds his arms out, knowing Parker may say no. 

She doesn’t. Lithe as she is, she can tuck herself onto the sofa alongside Eliot, sitting half atop Alec’s thigh, and she buries her face in his neck as Alec strokes her hair. Eliot is paying attention now. His fingers creep cautiously down the edge of the sofa to signal his approach before he wraps his hand around Parker’s ankle.

For the first time since the conversation started, he looks Alec in the eye. “I like kids,” he says, his gruff voice even. “Always liked the idea of a family, making something new, something real different from what I had, but when I got into this line of work...” He trailed off to shrug, wincing at the use of the injured arm. “Well, it’s not a job where you make a lot of long term plans. Wouldn’t mind going a little soft someday, I guess, if I lived that long, but--” He releases Parker to gesture to his torso -- the bleeding cut along his stomach, and the criss-cross of white lines and raised, starburst-shaped flesh that cover his body. “I’ve been stabbed in the guts. Shot, more than once, sometimes in the same day. Even if I wanted to do that, the baby stuff, the chances that I’d be _able_ to do it at this point--”

“Not important,” Alec says, cutting him off before the talk can veer into self-doubt. Following where his people are headed right now is easier than tracing a bank routing number to an offshore account. Parker and Eliot must have been thinking this over for a while, thinking Alec might want something that neither of them could give. It must have been gnawing at them, and he takes a second to give Parker a tight squeeze before she gets tired of the touching and escapes, then rubs his thumbs along the muscular line of Eliot’s thighs.

“We’re already a family, aren’t we? And Sophie and Nate, too.” Alec doesn’t need the others to nod to know they agree with him there. “None of us is remotely related, thank God. And most of us weren’t raised by our own flesh and blood family anyway.” He doesn’t add the ‘thank God’ there, but he knows Eliot and Parker can hear it. “We don’t need kids to be a family, and we don’t need _anyone_ to get knocked up for us to raise a kid, if that’s what we decide to do. Hell, it’d probably be easier on us. Lots of kids out in the world in need of new families.”

Parker brightens at that, the spark of an idea visible in her eyes, and Alec licks his lips. Parker with a plan is sexy _and_ dangerous -- his favorite combination. “We can steal a kid,” she announces with a grin. “A kid like me!”

Eliot shakes his head fondly, smile spreading slow as molasses over his face. “We’ll be waiting a long ass time if we’re holding out for another Parker. We’d be too old and grey to keep up by then.”

And Alec can’t decide which he likes more -- Eliot suggesting they’ll all be together in their old age, or the image of Parker teaching some weedy little street kid to pick a lock, Eliot hanging a smaller heavy bag beside his in the gym, and even Alec himself, at the computer with a kid on his lap, both of them bringing some hapless system to its knees.

When he lifts the rag from Eliot’s arm, it looks better. The bleeding has stopped, or at least slowed. The gash is deep enough to need stitching, but Eliot will want to do that himself, eyes fixed on the mirror using a needle Alec threads for him. For now, it’s clean and healthy. They’ve had much worse, all of them, and that’s good. One less thing to worry about.

He runs the damp cloth down Eliot’s arm, tracing the red trailing drips, and asks, “What brought all this up anyway?”

“The way you were looking at Eliot’s neck.”

Alec feels like a naughty child again for a second, caught peeking at a skin mag at the corner store. He ducks his head as his ears burn. “I know we can’t,” he says quickly. “Don’t think I’m angling for anything there.” A bond mark on the three of them would put a real damper on the work they could do, cutting off a lot of angles and backstories they normally exploit for cons.

“No,” Parker says firmly, hands planted on her hips. “We can. We totally can. We _will_ , if we want to.”

“Parker’s right.” Eliot’s hand rests on top of Alec’s, pressing into his skin. “Fuck the cons. We’ll make it work. We can make it all work. Just needed to know we were on the same page first, with the kid stuff.”

Alec swallows. “We on the same page?”

The other two grin back at him, and Alec feels himself light up like a slot machine that’s just hit jackpot. They are.

-

When Eliot’s next heat stumbles into their lives two months later, they’re ready for it. The negotiating table has been put aside in favor of fresh sheets and old pajamas -- the kind that are worn thin enough to tear like tissue paper, if one of them feels so inclined. 

They wake up together, all three of them draped across a king sized bed, Eliot next to the door and Parker closest to the wall. Sunlight warms the room, and Alec curls into the rich scent of fresh apple pie, waking from a pleasant dream of bare feet on his Nana’s avocado green linoleum. A small arm curves over Alec’s waist when he squirms, and he hears a soft, inquisitive growl at his back. 

It’s new. It’s different. It’s nothing they can’t handle, not the three of them. They balance each other, and they did that without being three perfect points of a dynamic triangle. Alec smiles into the side of Eliot’s throat and breathes in deep, and he feels Parker’s hand tighten on his hip in answer.

“We doing this thing?” He asks them both, one last check in while he’s still got the brain function to ask it, and they both answer an enthusiastic, wordless _yes_.


End file.
